'What If...?' review: Needs to be less reverential and more... bonkers

'Ah... it's so refreshing to step out onto another world and not see any of those confounded variants anywhere in sight.' Photos: Disney

Could've, would've, should've... we torment ourselves so much agonising over possible outcomes of past events, the roads not taken, the endless "what ifs" we ask ourselves in our heads. Even if none of that has a snowball's chance in heck of changing anything.

Need to escape from all that self-torment?

Well, there's no better place than a multiverse that answers a fistful of burning "What if?" questions – a place where alternate timelines branch out from key pivotal moments when just one variable in the mix is changed.

One of Marvel Comics' most oddball experimental titles – What If...?, what else, which started in the late 1970s and appeared in various – finally gets the Marvel Cinematic Universe treatment, and while this animated series does not really answer any burning questions, it poses and tackles some interesting ones.

Each episode is introduced by The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright, the Bond films' Felix Leiter), a nigh-omniscient being and part of a race that observes the goings-on in the multiverse but is forbidden to interfere.

Wright's commanding narration in the opening credits, as well as during the episodes themselves, initially seems a tad overwrought but works well if you regard it as being a combination of deadpan seriousness and tongue-in-cheek verbal winking at the viewer.

The series also features many of the original MCU actors providing the voices, with the late Chadwick Boseman especially turning up the feels whenever T'Challa appears (which is more often than you might think).

'It's curious that these American troops are rallying behind THIS shield. Or maybe they think I'm bulletproof.'

The deviations from the regular timeline include questions like, what if Peggy Carter took the Super-Soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers; or what if T'Challa became Star-Lord instead of Peter Quill; or what if Erik Killmonger saved Tony Stark in Afghanistan.

These alternate futures, however, still play out within the confines of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that we know.

Plus, these alternate timelines are apparently canon within the MCU, so some of them might play a part in all the forthcoming multiversal mayhem promised in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness, and beyond.

And that is where I am also a little disappointed with this series, good as the episodes are in general, both in terms of animation and storytelling.

Out of the six episodes I've watched so far (out of the nine slated for Season One), I couldn't help thinking that the careful curating that goes into each MCU movie and makes it such a fine fit into the big picture... should have been chucked aside for this series.

Some of the most memorable What If...? comics, after all, just took simple ideas and went nuts with them (like, what if Aunt May had received Spider-powers instead of Peter Parker?).

Granted, some of the best of those featured characters who have not been introduced in the MCU yet, like the X-Men and Fantastic Four and their wonderful supporting cast.

Still... the whole What If...? idea works best when caution, canon and boundaries are thrown to the wind, and I didn't get that sense of gleeful abandon from most of the series.

Then there's the very simple question of "What if... Zombies?" in the fifth episode, very loosely based on concepts in the "Marvel Zombies" comics run (which was worked on, among others, by The Walking Dead's Robert Kirkman and Civil War/Kick-Ass/Kingsman originator Mark Millar.

This is by far my favourite of the lot, not just because it combines zombies and superheroes but also because it turns the whole MCU on its ear with its nonstop irreverence, morbid humour and PG-13-level grossness.

Steve Rogers realised too late that he wasn't supposed to drink the Super-Soldier Serum.

All that, plus a neverending stream of surprises and mini-tragedies that make this single episode better than whole recent seasons of TWD.

And, despite working within the restrictive (in this context) rules and regulations of the MCU, series creator/head writer A.C. Bradley does have a good handle on the spirit of its printed counterpart.

For one thing, the stories do not necessarily have closure, being as they are springboards for the imagination, for us to extrapolate entire universes from these alternative beginnings.

For another, despite the deviation from established events, the characters remain largely true to themselves and their better (or worse) natures. So don't expect Loki or Killmonger to be saints, yo.

Deviations don't always result in variants.

New episodes of What If...? arrive every Wednesday on Disney+ Hotstar.